Curve Restaurant & Bar

Curve is best known for serving up fresh fish catch with a knowledgeable flair. Oysters, smoked salmon and sea bream reign supreme here, but there’s another reason to step foot inside this city haunt: brunch. Sundays offer up the chance to graze your way through a varied and extensive brunch menu, from late morning through to early afternoon.

We turned up starving at around 1pm and were given a quick tour of the menu options. Smoothies were made to order, with juicy bowlfuls of fruit available to pick and mix from alongside. There was also a seafood bar with king prawns and oysters on display with shallot vinegar to dress them with and numerous mayonnaise-based accompaniments. Following that was the continental buffet packed with croissants, Danish pastries, breads and preserves, and beyond that was the hot counter, where you could have your eggs any which way, slices of beek from the carvery, pancakes, stir fries – just about everything you could eat in a brunch time slot.

So what to go for? Well, everything basically. Our first thoughts were ‘”We’ll take this easy. We won’t stuff ourselves stupidly just because we can. We’ll be adult about it and eat only what we know we can manage.” Hmmmm. We walked over to the smoothies counter and ordered our wild berry blends and patted ourselves on the back for being so healthy. Then we filled our bowls with slices of grapefruit, plums, grapes and oranges and returned to our table, admiring the view of canary wharf and relaxed into brunch mode.

Oysters and smoked salmon we asked ourselves? Yes, why not. A very healthy zinc-laden option we thought and probably daft to turn up the chance of fresh seafood on a sunny London day when all the suits have gone home for the weekend, giving us suburbanites a good look around Canary Wharf and its slick, polished appeal. So, oysters and smoked salmon made their way onto our plates and added a decadent edge to our brunch along with two glasses of very reasonably priced Moët & Chandon at £3.50 each.

Roast beef, poached eggs and pancakes & syrup followed before we both tucked into bowls of stir-fried shoots, beef and chicken, laced with ginger & chilli and miso sauces respectively. There were some beautifully fashioned chocolate desserts waiting to be devoured on one of the self-service tables, but we had reached our limit and the heat of the sun had started to make the chocolate mousses sweat, so we decided to admit defeat.

Brunch at Curve is the ideal way to spend a hard-earned Sunday, relaxing and re-fuelling. The mix of self-service and chefs grilling your chosen items in front of you makes easing into a Sunday purely pleasurable. The only drawback with the food scenario that is brunch, is the inevitable over-eating you will do. It’s Sunday, so your mid-week guard is down, and despite the fact that you promise your stomach you will pace yourself, you sip on a smoothie for health, followed by a fruit bowl (also for health), and then you see the eggs cooked a gazillion different ways, and the roast beef, and the choose-it-yourself-stir-fry and that’s it – you’ve fallen for the job lot, and there’s not a thing your stomach can do about it. Apart from maybe demand a rest period of no movement for at least thirty minutes after you’ve eaten - it is Sunday after all.

Brunch at Curve: The new Brunch menu is available every Sunday from 1pm until 4pm, priced at £37 per person. Children up to six years can eat free of charge, and children between 7-12 years at only 50% of the cost.

Curve Restaurant & Bar: 22, Hertsmere Rd, London, E14 4AA

Tel: 020 7517 2808

Reviewer: Helenka Bednar